Dear Editor,

I normally would not take the time to respond to your columnist, Mark Wignall. However, his column in yesterday’s edition of your newspaper (: “Are we going back to the dark days of the mid 1990s?” is an attempt to rewrite history, with a total disdain for the facts. It cannot be permitted to go unanswered.

In this column, there is a photograph of me, with a caption: “foreign exchange agents used under him”. However, nowhere in the text is there any reference, either to me or to the false assertion of the caption to my photograph. In any event, Mr Wignall’s implied accusation is totally false. What are the facts?

The foreign exchange auction system instituted by the (Edward) Seaga Administration in the 1980s did give rise to a black market, with the Bank of Jamaica resorting to using agents to purchase foreign exchange ‘on the streets’. When this information came to the attention of Prime Minister Michael Manley in 1991, he ordered a full investigation, led by Sir Alister McIntyre, then the Vice Chancellor of the UWI. The investigation revealed that this unacceptable practice had started in the last years of the Seaga Adminstration and had continued, unknown to either the new BOJ Governor, G Arthur Brown, or Prime Minister Manley. Governor Brown immediately put a stop to this practice and senior officials of the BoJ were dismissed. Immediately after, the exchange system was totally liberalised.

All of the above is documented public information. In fact, the results of the investigation were presented by Sir Alister at a press conference.

In case Mr Wignall is interested in facts, I became Minister of Finance in 1993, fully two years after the BoJ’s involvement in the black market came to light and was terminated. What then is his rationale for associating me with this unfortunate practice? Is this sloppy journalism or plain malice?

In case Mr Wignall is interested in some additional facts, during my period as Minister of Finance, the NIR moved from (US)$12 million (December 1993) to over (US)$2,400 million in 2007.

Omar Davies, MP